


word salad

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: #015: stars, #017: legendary, #019: sense, #020: palette challenge, Alcohol, Angst, Extended Metaphors, M/M, Merpeople, Pining, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 17:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10858725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: this is just a collection of drabbles i wrote on lj for thekpop100 that i decided i wanted to post here. pairings are tagged in order of chapters





	1. see me in the sky

**Author's Note:**

> challenge #15; stars

He is a star, Jeonghan thinks, and by that, he means full of nothing but hot gas. He’s sure Joshua has never in his life been quick to pick up on anything, and Jeonghan’s advances are no different. A subtle glance from the side of his eye, a slanted half-smile, a ghost of a whisper tickling his ear. He doesn’t notice anything, and there must be nothing in his head but superheated hydrogen if he really can’t see something that stands out more than a billboard.

 

He is a star, Jeonghan thinks, and by that, he means intensely bright and a wonder to look at, shining and stellar against a backdrop that’s bound to be boring when something so wholly captivating is situated before it. Joshua’s laughter just might be the music of the cosmos if they sound as hellishly gorgeous as they look, and his eyes are either twinkling constellations or mesmerizing black holes depending on the angle and the time of day. A smile in a perfect crescent like the moon and a face that glows like the sun. Jeonghan has found a new hobby, and he thinks it a crying shame that stargazing can only be done from afar.

 

He is a star, Jeonghan thinks, and by that, he means a source of energy for an entire galaxy. In this case, Joshua is the sun and Jeonghan is the solar system, revolving around him because it can do nothing else and hoping nothing goes awry. There is, of course, one difference: the sun has never noticed its planets. When Joshua’s lips find their way to Jeonghan’s through a chance encounter in the vast vacuum they usually call life and his hands subsequently find their way to Jeonghan’s back, he thinks he may have been wrong about the hot gas.

 

He is a star, Jeonghan thinks, and by that, he means too hot to touch and dangerous to approach even if all the preparatory measures in the world have been taken. Joshua’s fingertips mark sunspots on Jeonghan’s skin when they’re together, festering in the cold when he’s forced to the aphelion and kept there past due. It’s frigid stranded alone in the wide nothingness of space, and that is difference number two: the sun has never realized it didn’t love a planet and left it out to die.

 

He is a star, Jeonghan thinks, and by that, he means something to stay away from at all costs. Stars ought not be touched, not even neared. Stars will burn off every layer of skin, one by one yet all at once, until your skeleton is bared and brittle and all too easy to destroy. Stars will lure you in with their beauty and reduce you to dust within a breath--one you won’t be able to take because space is a cold and heartless place that doesn’t have enough air--and no one will be around to miss you because they all told you touching stars would get you killed. Stars are nothing more than a heartbreakingly beautiful way to perish.

  
Joshua Hong is a star, and Jeonghan wishes he had stuck to admiring from a distance.


	2. dust or gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> challenge #17; legendary

“You’re a legend, Cheol, an absolute legend.”

 

That was what Joshua had told him. Is that what this is, he thinks, as his eyes stare down the empty neck of an empty bottle to a bottom drained of every drop? Was that what it was when he’d let the person he cared about most slip through his fingers and out the door, away to bigger and better and brighter, somewhere he knew Seungcheol couldn’t go? Was it ever true in the first place if it isn’t true now?

 

They’re just words; they’re weightless, inconsequential, almost meaningless if you hear them at the right time. Why, then, do they weigh on him like boulders cascading down from the heavens? Why are they all he can think about when he sees the empty space on his bed that used to be filled? Why, even when they’ve been stripped of every definition they ever possessed, even when they’ve been muddled beyond hope, are they always burning crystal clear in that achingly sweet voice, tender wisps of affection swept away by careless tides?

 

You’re a legend, indeed.

 

Perhaps he was, once, and perhaps he had something in him then that made Joshua see it. Perhaps Joshua had meant it when he’d said it, and perhaps Seungcheol had believed it was true. Whatever it was that Joshua saw, it was gone long before he walked out the door behind it, and as Seungcheol cracks open the last bottle in the case, he thinks that might’ve been why he left in the first place.

 

You’re a legend.

 

He hates himself for not being able to get those words off his mind even now, hates himself because he knows they couldn’t be further from Joshua’s thoughts. He hates himself because it’s sinking in with the last few drops that it was never true, because legends don’t get left behind, and Joshua’s left him both in mind and matter without so much as batting an eye. Seungcheol knows Joshua hasn’t spared him one thought since he went through that door, and now he’s out there somewhere finding a new legend of his own, bright-eyed and beautiful as he always had been.

  
It tears Seungcheol apart to know that he was never legend enough.


	3. around the stars and back again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> challenge #19; sense

“Keep your eyes closed,” Joshua whispered, so soft Soonyoung could barely hear it. “You’re not allowed to see anything until I say so.”

 

“Okay,” Soonyoung mumbled back hesitantly. He wished Joshua would’ve just put a blindfold on him instead, would have been much more comfortable knowing he couldn’t see even if he wanted to, but maybe there was something to be said for Joshua’s overabundant trust that he neglected to use one even when he knew Soonyoung would be so eager to tear his eyes open.

 

All he felt was Joshua’s hand around his wrist, warm and soft and comforting as it pulled him along. He heard gravel crunching under his shoes and he wished he knew where they were, wished he knew why the breeze was drawing goosebumps on his skin and the air smelled like pine. He wished Joshua would hold his hand instead of his wrist, too, lace their fingers together so he could feel the subtle heat coming from those fingertips as his own started to grow cold.

 

If he had a better sense of the passage of time, he would have been able to gauge how long they spent walking, but as the case was, all he knew was that it was a while. Joshua had a way of making him forget seconds were ticking by at all, a way of fooling him into thinking an hour could last forever until the sun went down and they’d accidentally spent forever together six times.

 

“Not much longer,” Joshua promised, voice hushed and sweet, a teaspoon of honey, a single cube of sugar. Soonyoung felt his hand finally slide down, fingers slipping between Soonyoung’s own to that place they fit so well. The gravel grating in his ears inexplicably started to sound a lot more like music.

 

It was at least an eon more before any words drifted to Soonyoung’s consciousness again. “You can open your eyes now,” came Joshua’s voice, and Soonyoung was ready and willing to do so, snapping his eyelids apart faster than he knew he could.

 

Breath was short in coming when he could finally see again. A clearing near the peak of a low mountain, trees on all sides slightly below, and above them, the universe. The moon couldn’t possibly be that big, could it? Surely not from so far away. Yet it was there, bright and immaculate and enormous, and Soonyoung was really here to see it looking so beautiful. Stars dotted the inky blackness around it, a luminous meadow framing a lake of silver snow, twinkling with a distant fire Soonyoung knew he could never feel.

 

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Joshua asked him, words filled to bursting with muted awe, with something so akin to love Soonyoung might have mistaken it.

 

“It is,” Soonyoung agreed after a beat, words in time with the pulse of his heart. “So beautiful.”

 

“I wanted you to see it,” Joshua said eventually. “I wanted to see it with you.”

 

A gentle squeeze reminded Soonyoung of Joshua’s hand in his, and he took the chance squeeze back, as if to say, Thank you. As if to say, I’m so glad I got to see it. As if to say, I want to see anything and everything so long as it’s you beside me. Joshua hummed and gripped Soonyoung’s hand a little tighter in return.

 

Thank you. He felt the unspoken words like heat racing through his nerves. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.


	4. look in my eyes and tell me yes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> challenge #20; palette challenge. chosen prompt was merpeople + pining

Junhui still remembers the first time he saw him.

 

He’d been out for a walk, down on the sand near where the water shoaled and the foamy remnants of broken waves crawled over his bare feet, leaving bubbles in their wake. He liked to take this walk early in the morning, when the sun was only beginning to consider rearing its head for the day, all the sand and waters alike painted by the pallor of dimness and shrouded by the ocean’s lazy fog. Something about the way his lungs filled up with the damp air, the way the crisp sea breeze tickled his skin, made it easier to start the day.

 

There had been no fog that day, and it was the first time Junhui had ever gotten to see how gorgeously the sunlight reflected off the rippling silver surface as morning crept in to replace night. It was the first time he’d ever gotten to see the colors bleed back into everything, the grays become blues and whites become tans and muddled beiges become sweet pinks. It was the first time he’d ever gotten to see the young man who lived there in the water, perched on a jutting rock and whistling a somber tune that clashed against the beautiful sunrise but somehow still sounded right.

 

He had a long tail where his legs should have been, silver that started to look purple once Junhui was close enough, and he was certainly the most beautiful thing Junhui had ever seen. His skin was reflective and crystalline, eyes deep and molten, and his hair fell in feathery, tawny wisps down to his eyebrows. As Junhui grew nearer, he turned his head and abandoned his whistling to stare at him, neither harsh nor welcoming.

 

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice sounded like a song, a sliver of the deepest part of the sea, and Junhui wanted to hold onto it.

 

“I’m Junhui,” he told him, inching closer. “Who are you?”

 

“Jihoon.” It had a mesmerizing ring to it that Junhui’s brain wouldn’t let go of. Junhui reached out without thinking, his hand its own master, but stopped when Jihoon flinched, eyes angrily trained on his fingertips. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You can’t touch me.”

 

“Why not?” Junhui’s fingers curled back in reluctantly, palm falling instead against the rough surface of the rock. He imagined how much smoother it might have been to feel Jihoon’s pearly skin, his iridescent scales.

 

“It’s not safe,” Jihoon said brusquely, turning his eyes back to look out over the water. Every wave rolling in danced in his irises, dynamic and eternal, crashing and crashing and crashing for the rest of time. “You and I aren’t the same.” Steam began curling off his sparkling skin as the sun climbed higher and higher, and he hummed out a few more melancholy notes before adding, “I have to go.”

 

“If I come back,” Junhui asked tentatively, “will I see you again?”

 

“If you look for me,” Jihoon said, eyeing the horizon. Without another word, he slid into the depths of the water and out of Junhui’s sight.

 

Yes, Junhui still remembers that day, and every day after it, too. Every day he’d gone down for his walk and peered hard through the fog until he thought he could see a silhouette resting upon it, thought he could hear a sad little song drifting his way through the haze. He’d call Jihoon’s name and hear a hum in response, ask him a question and get naught but a single word, extend his hand and be told not to touch. Jihoon would leave with a muted splash every day in the same manner, every day for years and years and years.

 

They’d told Junhui to stop wasting his life looking for a man who lives in the water, but he hadn’t listened. When they said he needed to get married and settle down, he hadn’t listened, and it’s too late for him to listen now.

 

Though Jihoon hasn’t changed at all, Junhui certainly has. His knees are too weak for him to walk on the sand where the water shoals and the broken waves leave bubbles at his feet, and his eyes are too clouded for him to see through the fog. He can feel that the day will likely end for him before it does for others when he rises from his bed, but he looks out his window and down to the beach, and he sees no fog.

 

Perhaps he’ll take his rusted knees for one last walk. Perhaps his aching eyes will fall on Jihoon just one last time, crumbling ears hear one last solemn note. Perhaps, with his warped fingers, he’ll finally be able to feel that beauty for the very first time.


End file.
